


feet are where i landed

by 40millionyears



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Pre-Series, actually the timeline is all over the place, gina linetti is a treasure, little boy holding little girl's hand, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/40millionyears/pseuds/40millionyears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“says the woman who’s been engaged eight times.” this has always been her downfall: distracted by something sparkly, she’ll agree to pretty much anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	feet are where i landed

This has always been her downfall: distracted by something sparkly, she’ll agree to pretty much anything.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
The truth is, Gina’s technically been engaged nine times.  
  
(Well, maybe eight and a half.)  
  
She doubts he even remembers now. They were ten years old and sitting on Nana’s fire escape after school, legs dangling over the street below. Gina’s father had walked out a month ago; Jake’s, a year before that.  
  
“When we’re old,” he’d started, and then fallen silent. She’d stared at him, lips stained red from her cherry Popsicle, waiting for him to continue. “When we’re old. You know, if no one else does. I’ll marry you. So you won’t be alone.”  
  
She’d snorted and burst into giggles. “Are you proposing to me, Jake?”  
  
He’d turned bright red and tried to shove her off the metal ledge. “Ew, _no_. It’s just… I think I’ll feel kinda bad when I have a supermodel rocket-scientist girlfriend and you have no one.”  
  
“Sweet, simple Jacob,” she’d drawled, hands waving in front of her body in a ‘look at all of this’ gesture. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m exquisite. Men will be lining up to propose.”  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
She’d been eighteen the first time her prediction came true. The summer after graduation, all cut-off denim shorts and blonde-streaked hair, a young man in a brand-new Army uniform had tripped over his own feet after spotting her in Prospect Park.  
  
Brad had been freshly out of West Point, on leave before beginning his commission. Clean cut and quiet, manners as solid as his boot-camp biceps. She’d started dating him because she really didn’t have anything better to occupy her time over the summer, and a fling with a military man had always been on her to-do list.  
  
After two months, on the eve of his departure, he’d presented a small diamond ring with a flourish and begged her to wait for him until April. Swept up in the romantic moment and enthralled by the power she’d had over him (and the fact that he’d _really_ filled out his uniform), she’d said yes.  
  
About two weeks later, the starry-eyed urgency of the whole debacle had worn off – much like the shine of the cheap ring – and Gina had realised that while she was destined for many things, a long-distance relationship and being a wife before she could legally drink were definitely not among them.  
  
(Fidelity wasn’t looking so hot, either.)  
  
She now blames Brad for her near-phobia of cubic zirconium.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
Number two came the next summer. Working endless terrible temp jobs and convincing the community centre dance team to buy her handmade unitards, Gina’s thrifty ways had allowed her a month in Italy.  
  
Sliding into the space next to her at a bar in Rome and paying for her espresso, Paolo had seduced her with his rich vowels and his penchant for buying her numerous rounds of grappa, and she’d allowed herself lingering fantasies of a life in the lap of luxury for which she’d always felt she was destined. He’d had a red Vespa. He’d had a yacht moored in the Adriatic. He’d had a giant family-heirloom engagement ring.  
  
He’d also had two other fiancées. And three girlfriends. And a wife.  
  
Gina didn’t even so much mind the other women as she minded being so low on the totem pole. Third fiancée? _Third?_ Gina Linetti was a frontrunner, or she was nothing.  
  
When the truth came out, near the end of her trip, she’d taken a significant amount of pleasure in dumping her cappuccino on his head and flinging the ring into the glittering pools of the Trevi fountain.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
Times three, four, and five were all the same man, but she’d made him buy a new ring each time, so she counts them separately. Tommy O’Donahue, with his wavy black hair, and his killer motorcycle, and the worst temper she’d ever witnessed. He’d proposed five months after they hooked up at a dive bar, and then thrown a garbage can at a homeless man an hour later because he’d thought she was flirting with a waiter.  
  
(She kinda had been.)  
  
It had become a pattern, after that. They’d fight, he’d throw things, they’d break up, he’d plead passionately that he loved her so much it just overwhelmed him sometimes, he’d offer a bigger and brighter ring, and on and on.  
  
Thirteen months in, the relationship had reached a level of dysfunction that even Gina was uncomfortable with: she hadn’t previously known such a level existed. She’d made sure to break up with Tommy in a public and extremely well-lit place (she liked drama, sure, but she also liked her teeth being intact). It hadn’t stopped him upending a sidewalk café table and lighting a scooter on fire.  
  
Jake, freshly out of the police academy and looking far too grown up for her liking, had turned up at her crappy apartment with pizza and beer after the third (last) time. “You okay?” he’d asked, sprawled inelegantly on her Goodwill couch after four bottles.  
  
She’d flashed him a bright smile. “A man lights a scooter on fire because of me? I’ve never been better, kiddo.”  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
 _She’d_ proposed the sixth time, on the advice of her new psychic friend Carlene, who had told her that the man she’d been alternately sleeping with and ignoring for the past three months was actually her soulmate and to lock him down immediately.  
  
He **really** hadn’t been, but her belief in Carlene remained nevertheless; in fairness, there were quite a few men she’d been alternately sleeping with and ignoring around the same time, and maybe she’d just popped the question to the wrong one.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
Number Seven was a favour.  
  
Freddy had been the partner of one of the founding male members of Floorgasm, in a bit of a visa bind. Gina had known him for years, and had looked at passing the immigration interview, if it came down to that, as something of a personal challenge. She really _did_ love lying.  
  
He’d taken her out to dinner and stuck a ring in the chocolate mousse – he’d been nothing if not almost comically committed to the whole charade – and she’d feigned surprise and preened as the entire restaurant applauded them.  
  
But then New York had legalized gay marriage and Freddy had been free to marry the guy he actually wanted to be with, and so her imminent fake-wife schtick had become superfluous. She’d acted as his best woman instead, and Floorgasm had brought the house down at the reception.  
  
She’d kept the ring, obviously. There were no hard feelings, and Freddy had great taste.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
Eight. Oh, Eight. Eight was just a nice, normal guy who had been bewitched by her boobs and her exuberance but, in the end, had been ill-equipped to deal with her particular brand of… what the boring professors whose lives she’d spent hours enriching at Holt’s party had termed “overlap of the ego and id.” She’s actually still surprised he’d lasted as long as he had; then again, crazy sex will compensate for almost anything.  
  
(She’d done things to him he’d only seen in movies.)  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
So when the first thing Jake had asked her after he got back from his undercover op, once she’d punched him extremely hard for even thinking he could keep the fact that he’d gone undercover from her, was “get engaged while I was gone?”… well, it hadn’t exactly been an out-of-the-blue question.  
  
It’s not like she even wants to be married, or ever did. Gina’s got a very full life, one that a husband – quite frankly – would just cramp. She just likes the thrill of getting men from that 30% initial level of attraction to the point where they want to _marry_ her. To have that kind of game eight times over – seven, to be strictly accurate, although she maintains that Freddy had been a tiny bit into her (he’d had eyes, hadn’t he?) – took some skills.  
  
She’d offered to teach Amy some of those skills upon Jake’s return, but had been met with a mortified “Inappropriate, Gina!” and a furious blush. She’d written up a little rulebook instead, complete with graphic illustrations, and slipped it into Amy’s in-tray. Jake Peralta deserved to tumble head over heels for a (certain) woman the way so many other men had for her, and Gina knew exactly how to get him there.  
  
At the very least, she figures that Amy would take the whole “being engaged” malarkey a lot more seriously than she ever had, and Jake deserved that as well.  
  
  
*   *   *  
  
  
She’s not too concerned about Charles just yet. So far, he’s managed to keep teetering just at the intersection of adoring and unavailable, which is how she’s historically liked her men. Irrevocably beyond the 30% mark, for sure – that trick she did with a kiwi fruit cemented _that_ – but not quite at the point of captivated reverence that she knows signals matrimonial intent.  
  
But sometimes… sometimes, usually after an illicit hookup in Babylon, he looks at her with the faintest hint of Full Boyle in his gaze, and she worries. In this regard, they’re kind of a match made in (some terrifying alternate universe version of) heaven. He’s no stranger to a reckless proposal, and she **saw** Vivian’s ring.  
  
She doesn’t have a hope in hell of saying no.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ I just really love Gina, and Gina & Jake's friendship. 
> 
> \+ The "The Apartment" episode of the BITF podcast reminded me of my weird interest in this storyline: assuming she's roughly the same age as Jake, how the hell has Gina been engaged eight times?
> 
> \+ Also my plane was delayed and I was bored.


End file.
